Choosing Nonfiction #NonfictionNovember
Week 2 of Nonfiction November is hosted by Frances at Volatile Rune. Check out her post today for links to all of the participating blogs.
Given that I read most nonfiction for my book club that focuses on race in America, I’m not solely in charge of choosing my nonfiction. Although, I should probably confess that I’m good at picking books to bring to our annual selection meeting that go on to be chosen. That’s a result of being a founding member, sixteen years ago, and of my librarian training. It’s not uncommon for our final list to include three books that I proposed out of the ten books chosen.
For me, personally and politically, the most important book that I read with the book club in the past year was A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan. That was our December 2023 selection.
Besides the book review, I wrote a post before the meeting to explain what I learned about my grandfather’s participation in the KKK in the 1920s.
I’ve written two posts since then that drew from what I learned reading A Fever in the Heartland.
The first post observed the 100th anniversary of the discriminatory Immigration Act of 1924 which was heavily influenced by the KKK.
The second post observed the 100th anniversary of the contentious 1924 Democrat Party Convention in Madison Square Garden, where the KKK wreaked havoc, guaranteeing that the Republican candidate, Calvin Coolidge, would win that year’s presidential election.
People have been comparing Trump’s Madison Square Rally to a Nazi one from 1939. I think a more apt comparison might be with the 1924 Democrat convention. The 1924 convention had real-world political impacts engineered by the white supremacist forces that have always been a part of the US political scene.
Panorama of the convention’s opening session at Madison Square Garden. By The Boston Globe.
The 2024 election is the time to send a strong message that white supremacist forces are a thing of our past and not our future. If you live in the US, what is your plan to vote?